A Mother's Duty (50 page)

Kitty could imagine. ‘Do you still care about her?’ she murmured, placing several rashers of bacon in the frying pan.

‘I’ve never forgotten her,’ he said simply. ‘I’d need to find out if there’s anything still there for us.’

The kitchen door opened and Hannah and Monica entered. They both stopped and stared. ‘So thee’s home,’ grunted Hannah, sending him a stern look from beneath twitching brows. ‘I hope thee’s asked forgiveness. Thou leaving caused a load of woe.’

Teddy smiled faintly. ‘You haven’t changed, Hannah.’

‘She still has too much to say,’ said Kitty. ‘I’m just glad you’re here. Now you rest and tell us what else has been happening to you.’

Teddy began to talk but Kitty could tell he was keyed up and she could guess why. She too was expecting John to walk in any moment. As it was the big fella had still not arrived home when Teddy was getting into his car. As he slid behind the steering wheel, he said, ‘You said Jeannie was nursing in the south. Do you know what county, or the name of the hospital?’

‘Oxfordshire. That’s all I can tell you,’ said Kitty.

‘Thanks, Ma. Take care of yourself.’ He gave her one of his smiles, waved and drove off.

John arrived home ten minutes or so later, looking weary and drawn. She waited until she had given him breakfast before telling him about Teddy’s visit.

‘I suppose you told him about Jeannie ringing,’ said John.

‘He asked after her.’ She leaned towards him, resting her hands on the table. ‘He hasn’t been having it easy, John. He’s been here, there and everywhere to different airfields, in the south as well as the north. Now he’s off to Salisbury Plain.’

‘Wiltshire,’ said John automatically. ‘It borders Oxfordshire on one side.’

‘Does it now,’ said Kitty softly.

He looked at her from beneath drooping eyelids. ‘Why are you saying it like that?’

She smiled. ‘I told him she was in Oxfordshire.’

‘And you think he can find her from that?’

Kitty did not answer him but she was thinking, where there’s a will there’s a way. ‘He’s twenty-one,’ she murmured.

There was a taut silence before he said, ‘And Jeannie’s twenty-three.’

‘They can do what they want now,’ said Kitty. ‘We can’t do anything about it.’

John got up and took the whiskey bottle (Irish, from Daniel) from a top shelf and poured a capful and drank it down. ‘If he can find her,’ he said carefully, ‘he deserves her, but the odds are he won’t.’

Kitty smiled. ‘You’d like to bet?’

‘What are you putting up?’ There was a faint smile in John’s eyes.

She shrugged. ‘We’ll decide that shall we when it’s settled?’

‘Agreed.’

It was a daft kind of bargain. But it felt as if they had arrived somewhere after being in a wasteland for a while, thought Kitty. Maybe everything would start to improve from now on.

The wind buffeted the car as it headed towards Oxford and fingers of icy air managed to find their way through the narrowest of cracks, chilling Teddy’s neck and ears. He dragged his scarf higher and would have given a lot for a cup of scalding hot tea. ‘“The north winds will blow and we will have snow,”’ he muttered. But the last thing he wanted was snow. Snow slowed things down and he had spent enough time since leaving Liverpool searching fruitlessly for Jeannie. Not sure whether she had joined the forces and become an army nurse, he had tried a couple of military hospitals; one set in a manor house in lush parkland and another in a group of Nissen huts, but without any luck. He had turned on the charm and asked a nursing sister for help. She had checked records and performed a few phone calls but with negative results, so he had switched his attention to civilian hospitals. He’d had little time to visit more than a couple before, much to his delight, he received orders to go to RAF Brize Norton, which was not far from Oxford.

The city of dreaming spires was the centre of the car-manufacturing empire of the creator of the Morris Cowley four-seater, which had ousted the Ford Model T from its position as the biggest selling car in Britain. William Morris had been made Viscount Nuffield not long before the war and Teddy admired him greatly. Even so, as he entered the city he was not thinking of motor cars but of Jeannie and hospitals. There were two he had been informed: the Cowley Road Hospital and the Radcliffe Infirmary on the Woodstock Road. He chose to visit the latter first.

As he drove up the driveway of the infirmary and stopped not far from a fountain of Triton and accompanying dolphins, he felt a sudden sick apprehension. What if he was at the wrong place again? What if Jeannie had moved on and was in another county? Perhaps she had gone south to Sussex where she had been born? He locked the car (Watch out! There could be a Jerry about!) and was aware his hands were trembling.

He took a deep breath and made his way towards the hospital entrance but as he reached the doorway a nurse came through. Immediately he seized his opportunity. ‘Excuse me, luv! Can you help me?’

Short and dark-haired, the girl stopped and sneezed. She pulled a hankerchief from a sleeve and dabbed her nose. ‘What d’you want?’ Her tone was nasal. ‘But hurry up I’m dying of cold.’

‘Jeannie McLeod. D’you know her?’

‘Sure.’ She looked at him with interest and then sneezed again. ‘You’ve missed her by about half an hour but if you hurry you might still find her. She said she was going to the Indoor Market on the High Street. If she’s not there, try the Nurses’ Home.’

Teddy thanked her and left hastily. He drove round past historical buildings and cobbled streets, remembering with half a mind an officer whose car he’d fixed and who’d been a student at Brasenose College, which was on the High Street. He’d said it had been taken over by the army and that most students had been billeted in Christ Church meadow. As Teddy looked about him his interest was stirred as he realised the place was just up Jeannie’s street with her love for all things historical.

Jeannie! Soon he would see her again and the misunderstanding between them would be cleared up. He could tell her how desperate and hopeless he had felt his case to be. How he had believed the only thing to do was to get clean away so he would not be a reminder of the accident which had crippled her! No, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t crippled now but she had suffered and the big fella had said— He went over again in his mind trying to decide the best way to put things. Then suddenly he saw her.

He pulled up with a squeal of brakes part way along the busy High Street and his heart began to pound like a piston. There was no doubting Jeannie still had the power to make him feel that she was the only girl in the world for him. She was standing outside what had to be the entrance to the market with a basket on one arm. She was wearing a cloak of some dark fabric and a nurse’s cap on her beautiful hair which was cut short and curled about her pinched-looking face. There was a droop to her mouth as she gazed about her – that mouth, which he had dreamed he was kissing so many times as he tossed on his narrow pallet.

He jumped out of the car. ‘Jeannie!’

She stared at him blankly and his spirits plummeted.

‘Marry me, Jeannie!’ He seized her hand and squeezed it tightly. ‘I’ve never stopped thinking about you! I’ve never stopped loving you! The last two years have been bloody awful without you.’

She took a deep breath and he was aware she was shaking. ‘Have thee, Teddy?’ There was a husky note in her voice. ‘Then why didn’t you write?’

‘I did! But you weren’t there to get my letter. I know I should have written sooner but I was all mixed up and miserable. I believed I’d crippled you for life and that you must hate me,’ he babbled. ‘Oh Jeannie, marry me! I can’t go on living without you.’ He pulled her against him and kissed her and went on kissing her and felt her yield for a moment before she pushed him away and gave vent to a volley of sneezes.

Teddy handed his handkerchief to her. ‘Well?’ he said anxiously.

She gazed at him from watery eyes above the khaki fabric. ‘I’ll think about it.’

He felt sick. ‘Is there someone else?’

‘It would serve you right if there was,’ she retorted in a muffled voice. ‘I went through hell after you left and gave Pops hell as well.’

‘But did you stop loving me?’ he demanded.

There was a pause and into that pause dropped an unfamiliar voice. ‘Is this your car, corporal?’

Teddy and Jeannie glanced at the policeman. ‘Yes, officer. I’m sorry,’ said Teddy, trying to look as if he didn’t want to strangle the man.

‘It shouldn’t be here,’ said the officer in severe tones.

‘I know. I’m sorry,’ repeated Teddy, hoping he wasn’t going to end up getting fined.

‘He was just in the middle of proposing to me, officer.’ Jeannie smiled at the man. ‘We haven’t seen each other for ages you see and—’

The policeman thawed slightly. ‘Just get him to move it, nurse, and we’ll say no more about it.’ He nodded and strolled away with his hands clasped behind his back.

Teddy turned to Jeannie. ‘Well?’ he repeated.

She blew her nose and pocketed his handkerchief. ‘Get in the car. You heard the officer,’ she said briskly.

He did as he was told. ‘Well?’ he said for the third time.

‘Drive on.’

He drove on under her direction until he parked in a wide tree-lined road. ‘Talk,’ she said, taking a roll from her basket. ‘Tell me everything. Where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing.’ She bit into the crackling crust.

He would rather have held her in his arms and kissed her, but he knew when to keep his distance. He talked, conscious of her eyes on his face the whole time, as if she was determined to read what was going on in his thoughts as well as his voice.

When he finished she leaned towards him and pulled his arm round her and immediately began to speak of her loneliness, of her fear, of her pain, in a hesitant manner which showed just how raw her emotions still were. His heart ached with love, sympathy and regret. They had both suffered, more than they would have if he had not run away.

‘Forgive me?’ he said awkwardly.

She nodded.

‘You’ll marry me?’

Again she nodded and smiled as she snuggled up to him. ‘A proper wedding,’ she said.

‘When? Where?’ Teddy could hear that anxiety in his own voice again. A proper wedding took time and planning and he didn’t want to wait, and said so.

‘I meant in church not a registry office. I don’t want a big fuss but there’s a lovely Methodist church here in Oxford – the Wesley Memorial Church. Remember me telling you about John Wesley not long after we met?’ Now Jeannie’s voice was soft with remembrance. ‘He was a student here at Oxford.’

‘When?’ he repeated, tugging off her nurse’s cap so he could nuzzle her ear and neck. ‘In the eighteenth century.’ ‘I didn’t mean him! I meant us – married. When?’ She chuckled, a warm, throaty chuckle. ‘Soon. I was there only yesterday at a meeting of the Women’s World Day of Prayer Movement. I’ll have a word with the minister. But it definitely won’t be until I’ve got rid of this cold.’

Teddy sighed heavily but it was more from a sense of relief than anything else. He had waited two years. He could wait a bit longer.

They were married a fortnight later with just a few of their friends attending. After much debate, they did not inform John and Kitty until the knot was tied because they were still unsure of the big fella’s reaction. Even so the young couple did miss the parents being there and said so in the letter they sent on their two-day honeymoon in Wales.

Kitty’s feelings were mixed when she received the news about the wedding. She was pleased that Teddy and Jeannie had found each other but disappointed that they had not let them know about their plans earlier. John was sore about the whole thing and Kitty said so when she sent them her congratulations.

But Teddy’s and Jeannie’s affairs were soon banished from their minds when news came that Mick’s ship had vanished. Until they heard to the contrary it was presumed it had been sunk with all hands. Kitty could not take it in. She kept telling herself that it couldn’t possibly be true. The fortune teller had said Mick would return! But then, said the rational side of her, who believed in fortune tellers?

John did his best to be positive. ‘Men went missing in the Great War and they turned up again.’

‘Not all of them,’ she said woodenly, her heart like lead inside her.

He had to admit that was true.

Ben was terrible upset and took to wandering. He found it soothing going down to the river and watching the balloon barrage ascend into the sky. There was something about the sight that lifted his downcast spirits. Afterwards he would walk through the streets, noting what damage the Luftwaffe had done the night before, wishing he was old enough to join up and kill more than a few Germans for his brother. He wondered what Mick would have made of the Custom House being bombed. There were other buildings of note which had also suffered from the air raids. The unfinished Anglican Cathedral had damage to its stonework and glorious stained-glass windows, and St George’s Hall had been set alight, but the blaze had been quickly brought under control. It was the bombed houses that angered Ben the most. They had been someone’s home and now it looked like a giant scythe had sliced through them.

So the months went by without any news of Mick, and Kitty refrained from telling Teddy or Jack about his being missing. She was determined to keep her hopes alive but it was hard to do so as the days lengthened and she often wondered why she was working so hard to keep everything going. Perhaps it was for Ben, whose presence continued to be a blessing to them – so much so that she feared for him every time he was absent for any length of time, but she tried her hardest not to smother him.

So it was that on the evening of the first of May, Ben was walking home from a mate’s house who lived not far from the river, when he saw Celia hurrying along the other side of the street. He watched her for a moment just to make sure he was not mistaken, remembering that first time he had met her with Mick. The thought of his brother made his heart sore but he crossed over to speak to her. ‘How are you, Celia? We thought you were still in that place in Cheshire.’